


Lucky

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, Character acquires pet rats; everything's great; rats are great, Gen, Prison, Rats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: For the crimes he committed as Kylo Ren, Ben will spend the rest of his life in prison. But it's not all bad. He's already making friends.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Lucky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



There’s a rat in Ben’s cell. Not counting the guard droid outside, it’s the most company he’s had in a while.

‘Didn’t pest control come through recently?’ he asks aloud. He heard a rumour to that effect, though no pest controller came within his meal-slot-wide field of view. No one ever does if they can help it. Just letting him out for yard time is a painstaking process requiring binders, a mobile containment field generator and a squad of heavily armed reinforcements. It’s still more freedom than he’d have if his own regime were running the prison ship. Ben does his best to remember that.

A flat metallic voice comes through the door. ‘Pesticides are not approved for use on the maximum security deck. Risk of inmate misappropriation is unacceptably high.’

Of course. ‘Well,’ he tells the droid, ‘there’s a rat in my cell.’

A long pause. Like the ship itself, these droids are Imperial salvage, repurposed by the New Republic in a desperate attempt to house the influx of First Order surrenders after the Battle of Exegol. They had to be gutted to extract the forceful inmate handling protocols that breached New Republic sentient rights laws, and the new AIs have had neither time nor motive to mature their conversational subroutines. ‘Place the unwanted item in your waste bin,’ the droid says when it’s done processing. ‘It will be removed from your cell on the next maintenance cycle.’

Ben looks at the rat. It’s smaller than the usual prison vermin, bones visible through a coat of matted fur, ribcage fluttering with each shallow breath. Touching the Force, he feels a spark of life so faint he could snuff it with a pinch of his fingers. The rat is dying, too weak from starvation or disease to move.

There’s no good reason not to let nature run its course.

He scoops it up, meaning to throw the creature’s near-dead body in the waste bin as instructed. But his hands have their own plan. For some reason, instead of tossing it, Ben channels his life force through his fingers into the rat. It takes almost nothing. The equivalent of maybe a few drops of blood. Its tiny ailment healed, its energy restored, the rat leaps from Ben’s grip like a blaster shot and streaks away under the bunk.

When his dinner arrives through the door slot, he breaks off a few small chunks of bread and flicks them down there with it.

* * *

‘I could break out of here, you know,’ he says. ‘It wouldn’t be hard. They can scan me for weapons five times a day, but they can’t take away the Force.’

The droid isn’t listening. Neither, as far as Ben can tell, is the rat. It hasn’t moved from under his bed since yesterday, except to gobble up the food he dropped on the floor for it this morning. Its spark of life is already burning brighter. In Ben’s lonely cell, the spark feels warm like a bonfire.

‘I stay because it’s the right thing to do. After everything I’ve done, the galaxy deserves peace of mind. War criminals like me belong behind bars.’

The words taste acrid. They have no effect on the rat, who appears to be sleeping. Ben hangs his head over the bunk and squints at the tiny round shape in the darkest corner.

‘Out of all the cells you could have picked, you came to mine. Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? I’ve killed more people than every other prisoner on this hellship put together.’

The rat shifts position. Balled up on all fours, it tucks its head under its chest like a furry potato and continues snoozing.

‘I killed without mercy,’ Ben says. ‘Because I wanted to. Because I thought I was right. Because I was angry, and I wanted everyone else to suffer for it. And the only reason I’m not still killing is because I don’t want to anymore. If I ever change my mind, these walls and those droids won’t be able to stop me. Do you understand that? Are you afraid?’

No answer.

When lunch comes, he drops some on the floor. After a while, a tiny dark blur of motion snatches the morsel and sprints back to its dark corner. Ben hears the quiet sound of munching.

* * *

Prison rats are all alike: they’re big and mean and terrified of people. They come out after dark to fight over food scraps, and if cornered, they bite to draw blood. There’s been more than one case of rat bite fever when an inmate tried to stop the little thugs from stealing dinner. He’s heard they carry plague. He’s heard they eat their own dead. He’s heard they eat dead inmates, too, if anyone dies overnight and the body isn’t found at once.

This rat’s different. On its third day in Ben’s cell, it creeps out into the bright electric light, feet splayed as it hugs the ground. It’s still painfully thin. It has the unmistakable air of a weakling – a runt, an outsider, too small to compete with its more vicious peers. ‘I don’t have any food right now,’ Ben says. The rat stiffens at the sound of his voice, but doesn’t run. ‘I eat when they feed me.’

He reaches out in the Force. Rat minds aren’t like anything he’s ever bothered touching, but they’re more complex than he would have guessed. Through the haze of the creature’s instinctive fear, through the gnaw of its hunger, he senses intelligence and curiosity. This rat is no mindless pest. It knows its little body is weak; it knows it can’t fight to defend itself the way other rats do. It understands that it was Ben who made the sickness stop. It understands that he’s the one who put food on the floor, and has high hopes of his doing so again. It can’t survive alone – it needs him. It thinks: out there, death. In here, a chance.

No one’s ever come to Ben for safety before. He was Kylo Ren, and now he’s Inmate 405036, guilty of crimes so brutal that even droids programmed to feel no fear give his cell a wide berth. The rat’s optimistic trust does something to his insides. Something squirmy and warm, like there’s a small furred creature nestled in his ribs.

‘I’ll share when dinner comes,’ he promises. ‘You clearly can’t be trusted to fend for yourself, if you think  _ I’m  _ the one to rely on. No instincts at all. It’s no wonder you were almost dead.’

* * *

After a few more meals, the rat puts on weight. Its bones recede, and the condition of its coat improves, helped along by its newfound love for grooming itself.

‘You’re lucky, you know,’ Ben says, watching the rat administer a vigorous and intimate tongue-bath in the middle of the cell floor. ‘If I could lick my own balls like that, prison would be so much less boring.’

The rat takes another lick, beady eyes bright with satisfaction.

* * *

Ben has always had an obsessive streak. It’s why he was able to master his Force powers so young, and why things went so wrong when he latched onto the dark side. Prison doesn’t encourage diversified interests. He has six square metres of living space including his bunk, table, ‘fresher and sink. He gets one hour of supervised yard time a day. There’s no holonet, just a datapad with pre-downloaded books, none of which he’d read by choice. Sleep is free, but only if he can ignore the lights left on around the clock and the noisy tramp of patrolling droids. Most inmates work during the day, but Ben’s far too high-risk for that. He’s been bored out of his mind since the day he arrived.

Now, he has Lucky the rat.

He starts small. Gentle meditations in the Force, lying flat on his stomach on the floor so that he doesn’t loom, reaching out to let his mind touch the bundle of nerves that is his cellmate. He projects good intentions. Saves scraps of his meals to use as bait.  _ Here, a whole pea, just for you. But I won’t drop it. You have to take it from my hand. _

Lucky is clever. He adapts fast. Soon, he is not only snatching peas but licking gravy off Ben’s fingertips.

His favourite spot is still under the bunk, in the darkest corner beneath where Ben’s head lies. But sometimes he likes to come out into the open cell and sniff around. A couple of times Ben is reading in bed and looks up to see Lucky snoozing at the end of the mattress with his head tucked under his chest. Ben’s request for a spare blanket is denied. Instead he takes the case off his pillow and lets Lucky make a nest out of it, hiding in the folds of fabric and gnawing happy holes.

Lucky gains more weight. He’s still on the small side for a rat, but his belly is rounded and his fur is lush. His presence in the Force takes on a distinct note of smugness. His gamble in trusting Ben has paid off. He’s living better than he’s ever lived before. ‘You’re a manipulative little thing,’ Ben tells him. ‘Don’t think I don’t know you’re taking advantage of me.’

But he likes being taken advantage of. Likes having something to do with his time, likes having  _ life  _ inside the cell instead of just droids and reinforced walls. He’s grown fond of the ratty scent in his cell, not foul at all as long as he remembers to wash the pillowcase nest every couple of days. His heart lifts when he hears the sound of sharp teeth clacking and grinding. Against all better judgement, Ben is starting to love his rat. It’s all he thinks about. More than yard time, more than dinner.

So of course it all goes wrong.

One day the guards come for him earlier than usual. As it happens, he’s already in compliance posture, stomach-down on the floor talking to Lucky. He lies flat, holds his hands behind his back and waits for the droids to cuff him so he can be led out to the yard.

But it’s not droids. Not  _ just  _ droids. ‘Poor son of a bitch,’ says a human guard as they lead Ben the wrong way down the hall inside a glowing orb of portable containment field. ‘Months straight of solitary confinement – it’d do anyone’s head in.’

‘I can think of worse fates,’ says another guard, voice cold through the crackle of the force field. Quarren, by the look of the chin tentacles poking out of his riot helmet. His home planet was one of the few that dared defy the First Order during Ben’s reign. It didn’t end well for them.

‘Luckily for him,’ says the human as Ben swallows guilt that tastes sour like bile, ‘it’s the Commandant doing the thinking, not you. Solitary’s a form of torture, Skip. No matter what  _ he’s  _ done, it’s not who  _ we  _ are. We’ve both seen the security footage. The guy’s gone mental cooped up in there all alone. He’s been holding conversations with a kriffing rat. Something doesn’t change, he’ll need a straitjacket.’

They march Ben down several long corridors, up a turbolift and through a maze of cells. Security is looser here. The cells have windows onto the concourse, allowing inmates to see and talk to each other. There’s a common room, empty now but well used. The noise overwhelms Ben. People talking, shouting, laughing. The clatter of movement in cell after cell. The thrum of life all around in the Force. He hasn’t seen this much activity since the day he surrendered himself into custody. He’d forgotten the world was so loud.

The new cell they deposit him in is larger than his normal one, with neighbours on either side and a view of a holoprojector through the door grille. ‘You’ll be staying here from now on,’ says the guard who hates Ben less. ‘Still on permanent lockdown. But at least you’ll have real people to talk to, even if you can’t join a work party or use the common spaces.’

His voice hovers somewhere between stern and patronisingly kind. The guards think they’re showing compassion. Being humane. A sense of unreality descends as Ben’s senses, swamped by too much input, shut down. ‘I want to go back,’ he says. It’s nearly lunchtime. Lucky will be waiting for him.

But they don’t take him back. They leave him there, separated from his rat and surrounded on all sides by the noisy hell that is other people.

* * *

When the shock of the change subsides, Ben talks sense into himself. Lucky is a wild rat. Now that he’s regained his strength, he can fend for himself. The extra space in this new cell is nice. There’s more to do. More to think about. The other inmates aren’t exactly friendly, but trading barbs with them through the window is one more way to kill time.

He meditates. Reaches out to Lucky in the Force. It’s almost impossible to find such a quiet little mind through the psychic noise, but Ben has had countless hours of practice in solitary with nothing to do but commune with his rat. There’s a bond between them, a strand of connection like an extra-long rat’s tail wrapped around Ben’s heart.

Lucky is where Ben left him, all alone in the cell.  _ You should go, _ Ben thinks at him, shaping the thoughts into wordless intentions for Lucky to feel and – hopefully – act on.  _ Get back in the world. Find other rats. Learn to hunt your own food again. _

All he gets back is confusion.

He tries again later, cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the baffled looks from his fellow inmates across the hall.  _ Don’t want to join the other rats? That’s fine. Maybe you can join me instead. I can’t come to you, but you can come to me. _

More confusion, tinged with anxiety this time. The cell around Lucky is too quiet, too cold. It’s nearly dinnertime and he doesn’t understand why Ben isn’t there to feed him.

_ It’s not my choice, _ he thinks as hard as he can.  _ They took me to another cell. All you have to do is come find me. Come on, use your nose. I know you can do it. _

Lucky doesn’t move. Far away on the solitary confinement deck, he hunkers down in a pillowcase nest that’s starting to smell, that Ben isn’t there to wash.

He makes one more attempt after dinner. Lucky is starting to get scared in earnest. Ben’s never left him alone before except for his yard time hour, and now it’s been a whole day, and he’s hungry and lonely and bored. He wants his person back. Can’t understand why his person isn’t there. It feels like a betrayal. Ben’s heart aches, and a sense of urgency builds: he can’t leave Lucky alone.  _ Can’t. _ Not when he’s taken responsibility for him. No one’s ever trusted Ben before the way that little guy does, and if he lets Lucky down, he’ll never deserve anyone’s trust again. 

Once the choice is made, it’s easy. Back before he was a docile inmate, Ben used his power in the Force to bring the galaxy to its knees. He still has all that power, and even without his weapons or his former armies to back him up, it’s enough. He thought he’d never use it again. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

He does what he has to do.

* * *

Hours later, they catch up to him. The droids and the guards and a new, unfamiliar human, who Ben assumes by his jacket and cap must be the Commandant himself. ‘The scanner droids finally thought to check here as well,’ says the Commandant. ‘We expected to find you at the escape pods or in the armory. No one ever dreamed you’d break back  _ into  _ maximum security.’

Ben stays lying on the floor, but he doesn’t put his hands behind his back for binders. He refuses to move a muscle, because something magical has happened: Lucky, nervous instincts overcome by the distress of separation, is nuzzling Ben’s palm and letting him scratch behind his ears. ‘No one asked me if I wanted to move cells,’ he says.

The Commandant stares. His eyes betray fear, which is fair, given that Ben just proved what the whole prison staff have spent huge amounts of credit and effort trying to make untrue: all the security around Ben’s cell, all the guard shifts, the extra measures, they’re nothing but set dressing. They can’t actually hold Ben against his will. And yet the Commandant has seized all his courage and come to confront him in person. That deserves respect.

‘Listen,’ Ben says – quietly, so as not to disturb his and Lucky’s moment of domestic bliss – ‘for what it’s worth, I don’t want any trouble. All I want is my rat.’

‘Your…’ The Commandant swallows audibly. ‘Your rat.’ 

‘Yeah.’ He scratches Lucky’s neck, and Lucky reciprocates by nibbling his finger, grooming Ben just like he grooms himself. ‘I appreciate you letting me out of solitary, don’t get me wrong. And the other cell was nice. You can take me back and I promise not to break out again. But you have to let me take my rat with me.’

A long silence follows. Ben can almost see the Commandant’s brain working, not much faster or more effective than the bare-bones processing power of his guard droids. ‘You’ll say in your cell,’ he says at last, ‘as long as we let you keep the rat.’

‘Sure,’ says Ben. And then, seized by inspiration: ‘And I want a spare blanket for him as well. They turned down my request last time I asked.’

‘You know what?’ says the Commandant after another long pause. ‘Fine. That was a reinforced durasteel blast door you broke through, and the containment field you took offline was sliceproof military tech. I don’t see that we have much choice. You can have your spare blanket, and your rat. But Kylo Ren?’

‘Mm?’

‘You pull a stunt like this again, you might just find yourself “escaping” to a new cell on a world that has the death penalty.’

‘That’s fine,’ Ben says placidly. The Commandant can threaten as much as he wants now. Ben has the only thing he needs.

He grooms his rat, and his rat grooms back, and the galaxy knows peace.


End file.
